Don't let the bedbugs bite!
Jul. 30th, 2005 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night we had a session of Lazar's Shadake game, continuing in our efforts to fulfill some superstitious villagers' silly prophecy.
When Wayne got back to his room that night, after dinner with the villagers, he found his makeshift dehumidifyer (which had proven useless against the mushrooms) still running -- soaking wet, now, and dripping water. That seemed potentially kind of almost useful, so he hung it up and set a bucket under it to catch the drops. The water tasted foul (when he tasted a drop), but made him feel 'better'.
In the morning, after Perrel finally got around to mentioning that he'd made plenty of healing salve to fix Wayne's wing, they started ferrying the villagers up. Balthazaar was at the bottom with Roshan or Wayne (they switched off) while Perrel and Wayne or Roshan led skymantas with villagers on them up to the whale's back. Jardin was on top, helping unload and set up their luggage -- which included things like tents or huts or whatever they were.
Halfway through the day, Perrel's Luzezango fell off his skymanta. There was a backup plan in place for this eventuality, of course -- Wayne caught him (kinda) and (with him dangling off his tail) lowered him to the nearest landfall. Eventually, he was taken up to the top intact, without having to be stung and paralyzed or anything. ("Do all angels have stingers?" "All my people do." "That doesn't seem very angelic..." "I never claimed to be an angel, you know.")
But this break in the routine woke him up enough to spot creepy eyestalks watching them from the forest of vines underneath the airwhale. After landing, he mentioned this to Perrel as something they should probably check out before taking anyone else up -- just as the screaming started.
Wayne's manta hadn't followed him during his rescue maneuvers, and was still hovering with two luzezango on its back -- who were being harrassed by a weird floating creature with eyestalks on its 'tail', no visible mouth, a glowing white 'hood', and dozens of little legs with which is seemed to be carefully inspecting the young girl. "Call the manta!" Wayne shouted, as he flew over to investigate. The manta quickly flew back to Perrel at his call, but the monster snatched the screaming girl off its back.
Still, it didn't seem to be actually *hurting* her, so Wayne tried to talk to it, and calm her down before she made it angry. In the process, he made it angry, when he grabbed her hands to keep her from beating at it and it interpreted that as stealing its food.
Another had appeared, by now, but Jardin and Perrel (on the two mantas) had come down to help. Jardin grabbed one and dragged it up top (where the villagers stabbed it to death), while Perrel and Wayne chased after the one who'd taken the girl, not wanting to let it do anything horrible to her even if they weren't sure how aggressive these things were.
The one handed the girl off to a second, then turned to deal with Wayne, grabbing him and tickling at his armor with little legs that couldn't *possibly* be weapons, could they? He positioned himself to be able to sting it, but hesitated, still trying to talk to it or calm it down or something, to no avail.
The one that now had the girl stuffed her in a little nest, which was Perrel's signal to attack -- he grabbed its 'tail', and it screeched and flew away, unfortuantely (for it) fleeing to find its mate, whose remains Jardin was now coated in. The villagers killed it too.
The last one, grappling Wayne, started glowing red and tried to ram Perrel, who'd pulled the girl from the nest and was now trying to fling the dozen or so baby monsters off of them. The girl *still* looked mostly unharmed, although the babies had burned her a little. Wayne stung it, finally, and was joined by Roshan, and together they beat up on it until it exploded... unfortunately, Roshan had been too close and was badly burned all over her body, but not so badly that she couldn't still move to the (now de-monstered) manta to collapse.
All of them rushed down to the ship to check the girl for injury and to heal Roshan. Perrel had enough healing salve left to cure her burns, although it used up most of his supply. ("Man, Cytherians are hangar queens.")
The girl was only slightly burned, but Perrel (who saw using aura-sight) noticed that each little burn represented a much larger section of her aura burned away -- the monsters had been trying to eat her soul! Definately not friendly, then.
So they went and retrieved Jardin (who was undergoing a ritual cleansing to remove the taint of magic) and scouted out the bottom of the airwhale in force, to see just how many of these things were down there. The answer was 'not that many' -- there were three more nests with three adults each, and each of the four nests had about 100 babies... but the babies were no immediate threat, since they could barely move. They took a few babies back for Balthazaar to play with, though.
Consulting with the villagers, the village decided that the monsters weren't really so much of a threat that they needed to be wiped out -- in fact, they could be a source of (rather icky) meat. So they rearranged their transport schedule to avoid the remaining nests (as the nest whose adults had been killed was quickly eaten bare by passing birds) and continued ferrying up the village.
During this process, they spotted some skeletons hanging from gallows on a nearby plateau, and went to investigate -- this whole area had been underwater before the cataclysm, so no one could possibly have been hanged back when the area was livable. When they got closer, Perrel noticed a faint aura around them, so Wayne threw some rocks at one to see if it would explode, like a book. Except that he couldn't hit it, no matter how many times he tried.
Wayne: "Oh, so they're enchanted to deflect attacks! That could be useful, we should take them with us."
Perrel: "They're old magic from the war -- we should stay away from them. They could be dangerous!"
Wayne: "Nonsense! This is obviously the type of harmless magic that Jirae's elders tell us to embrace." With that, he went up and embraced one of the skeletons, and sure enough it didn't come to life or attack him or anything.
Still, the villagers were really leery of magic, so they let the skeletons lie for the moment, and instead finished up moving them up onto the whale.
Just as the villagers were getting ready to celebrate their ascension to 'heaven', the 'ground' shook and rumbled, knocking down most of their buildings... and a loud wet noise came from the rear of the whale! The students went to investigate this event, only to find that the whale had just given birth -- a good omen, and a sign that the villagers' new home had accepted them! Or at least, that's how they sold it.
Then they headed off. Now that they had time to themselves, they noticed the damage the monsters had done to Wayne and Jardin's armor -- the little legs had been undoing the stitching. Bastards! Jardin's in particular took magic to fix, since its fireproof kili hide wasn't very useful without fireproof stiching as well, which meant repairing the bits of sliced thread instead of replacing them.
They also went back to get the skeletons, but this proved a bit harder than anticipated -- if a skeleton was removed from a gibbet, it would crawl back and re-hang itself as soon as no one was looking. The creepiest part of the tests that discovered this was when they turned back around too quickly and it was only *halfway* back. Brrrr.
But, it still seemed likely to be mostly harmless, so they loaded up one of the gibbets (that had a Daeg wizard skeleton) on the manta and took it back to the ship.
last week | next week
Next week we'll probably be playing in Lazar's new place, since they're moving, like, right now.
When Wayne got back to his room that night, after dinner with the villagers, he found his makeshift dehumidifyer (which had proven useless against the mushrooms) still running -- soaking wet, now, and dripping water. That seemed potentially kind of almost useful, so he hung it up and set a bucket under it to catch the drops. The water tasted foul (when he tasted a drop), but made him feel 'better'.
In the morning, after Perrel finally got around to mentioning that he'd made plenty of healing salve to fix Wayne's wing, they started ferrying the villagers up. Balthazaar was at the bottom with Roshan or Wayne (they switched off) while Perrel and Wayne or Roshan led skymantas with villagers on them up to the whale's back. Jardin was on top, helping unload and set up their luggage -- which included things like tents or huts or whatever they were.
Halfway through the day, Perrel's Luzezango fell off his skymanta. There was a backup plan in place for this eventuality, of course -- Wayne caught him (kinda) and (with him dangling off his tail) lowered him to the nearest landfall. Eventually, he was taken up to the top intact, without having to be stung and paralyzed or anything. ("Do all angels have stingers?" "All my people do." "That doesn't seem very angelic..." "I never claimed to be an angel, you know.")
But this break in the routine woke him up enough to spot creepy eyestalks watching them from the forest of vines underneath the airwhale. After landing, he mentioned this to Perrel as something they should probably check out before taking anyone else up -- just as the screaming started.
Wayne's manta hadn't followed him during his rescue maneuvers, and was still hovering with two luzezango on its back -- who were being harrassed by a weird floating creature with eyestalks on its 'tail', no visible mouth, a glowing white 'hood', and dozens of little legs with which is seemed to be carefully inspecting the young girl. "Call the manta!" Wayne shouted, as he flew over to investigate. The manta quickly flew back to Perrel at his call, but the monster snatched the screaming girl off its back.
Still, it didn't seem to be actually *hurting* her, so Wayne tried to talk to it, and calm her down before she made it angry. In the process, he made it angry, when he grabbed her hands to keep her from beating at it and it interpreted that as stealing its food.
Another had appeared, by now, but Jardin and Perrel (on the two mantas) had come down to help. Jardin grabbed one and dragged it up top (where the villagers stabbed it to death), while Perrel and Wayne chased after the one who'd taken the girl, not wanting to let it do anything horrible to her even if they weren't sure how aggressive these things were.
The one handed the girl off to a second, then turned to deal with Wayne, grabbing him and tickling at his armor with little legs that couldn't *possibly* be weapons, could they? He positioned himself to be able to sting it, but hesitated, still trying to talk to it or calm it down or something, to no avail.
The one that now had the girl stuffed her in a little nest, which was Perrel's signal to attack -- he grabbed its 'tail', and it screeched and flew away, unfortuantely (for it) fleeing to find its mate, whose remains Jardin was now coated in. The villagers killed it too.
The last one, grappling Wayne, started glowing red and tried to ram Perrel, who'd pulled the girl from the nest and was now trying to fling the dozen or so baby monsters off of them. The girl *still* looked mostly unharmed, although the babies had burned her a little. Wayne stung it, finally, and was joined by Roshan, and together they beat up on it until it exploded... unfortunately, Roshan had been too close and was badly burned all over her body, but not so badly that she couldn't still move to the (now de-monstered) manta to collapse.
All of them rushed down to the ship to check the girl for injury and to heal Roshan. Perrel had enough healing salve left to cure her burns, although it used up most of his supply. ("Man, Cytherians are hangar queens.")
The girl was only slightly burned, but Perrel (who saw using aura-sight) noticed that each little burn represented a much larger section of her aura burned away -- the monsters had been trying to eat her soul! Definately not friendly, then.
So they went and retrieved Jardin (who was undergoing a ritual cleansing to remove the taint of magic) and scouted out the bottom of the airwhale in force, to see just how many of these things were down there. The answer was 'not that many' -- there were three more nests with three adults each, and each of the four nests had about 100 babies... but the babies were no immediate threat, since they could barely move. They took a few babies back for Balthazaar to play with, though.
Consulting with the villagers, the village decided that the monsters weren't really so much of a threat that they needed to be wiped out -- in fact, they could be a source of (rather icky) meat. So they rearranged their transport schedule to avoid the remaining nests (as the nest whose adults had been killed was quickly eaten bare by passing birds) and continued ferrying up the village.
During this process, they spotted some skeletons hanging from gallows on a nearby plateau, and went to investigate -- this whole area had been underwater before the cataclysm, so no one could possibly have been hanged back when the area was livable. When they got closer, Perrel noticed a faint aura around them, so Wayne threw some rocks at one to see if it would explode, like a book. Except that he couldn't hit it, no matter how many times he tried.
Wayne: "Oh, so they're enchanted to deflect attacks! That could be useful, we should take them with us."
Perrel: "They're old magic from the war -- we should stay away from them. They could be dangerous!"
Wayne: "Nonsense! This is obviously the type of harmless magic that Jirae's elders tell us to embrace." With that, he went up and embraced one of the skeletons, and sure enough it didn't come to life or attack him or anything.
Still, the villagers were really leery of magic, so they let the skeletons lie for the moment, and instead finished up moving them up onto the whale.
Just as the villagers were getting ready to celebrate their ascension to 'heaven', the 'ground' shook and rumbled, knocking down most of their buildings... and a loud wet noise came from the rear of the whale! The students went to investigate this event, only to find that the whale had just given birth -- a good omen, and a sign that the villagers' new home had accepted them! Or at least, that's how they sold it.
Then they headed off. Now that they had time to themselves, they noticed the damage the monsters had done to Wayne and Jardin's armor -- the little legs had been undoing the stitching. Bastards! Jardin's in particular took magic to fix, since its fireproof kili hide wasn't very useful without fireproof stiching as well, which meant repairing the bits of sliced thread instead of replacing them.
They also went back to get the skeletons, but this proved a bit harder than anticipated -- if a skeleton was removed from a gibbet, it would crawl back and re-hang itself as soon as no one was looking. The creepiest part of the tests that discovered this was when they turned back around too quickly and it was only *halfway* back. Brrrr.
But, it still seemed likely to be mostly harmless, so they loaded up one of the gibbets (that had a Daeg wizard skeleton) on the manta and took it back to the ship.
last week | next week
Next week we'll probably be playing in Lazar's new place, since they're moving, like, right now.
